TV/Movies Megathread

[katmai]

[garbon]

I'm assuming this is to my first post.

[Ideologue]

Skyfall , what a pile of shit. When are they changing up the franchise? None of Craig's Bonds has been any good and Eva Green the only memorable Bond girl. And what was up with the new Q? Aren't they 20 years late with that joke? Generally the whole thing was riddled with boring cliches about old > new, in the end I rooted for Bardem to shoot M. Speaking of Bardem, he is a fucking chameleon, wow.

You liked it?

Pay him no mind.
You are, with reservations, right.

I did like it.

Can type now.

I never wrote a review for Skyfall because I didn't know how the fuck I felt about it.  It's a beautiful movie, and often that's (more than) enough.  Maybe if it'd gone for zany, I wouldn't have cared that its plot was 100% premium bullshit, or about the fact that the titular "Skyfall" refers to a GODDAMN HOUSE and the movie involves APPROXIMATELY ZERO space lasers OR space bases (or even commandeered drones, which is what I actually thought it might be about, and which would have furthered that whole "sometimes you need an man with a gun" thing which is not highly developed, along with the "James Bond is getting old" theme which is, ala Dark Knight Rises, practically stillborn insofar as it has no bearing on the film after they bring it up).  And there are some zany bits, particularly with Bardem, but it wasn't zany enough.  Maybe they needed him to be more gay?  That would have helped.

Also, the whole bizarre stable time loop thing with references to super-old Bond movies having occurred yet also not yet to occur--that was weird.

Quantum of Solace was way better.  That's not that damning, I guess, since Quantum was way better than almost all of the thirteen or so I've seen, except Goldfinger, Goldeneye, and the edited version of Moonraker with no speedboat chases instead of two that exists only in my mind.  But Quantum's like an A and Skyfall is like a C+.  (Quantum is the Temple of Doom of new Bond, disliked by many and shortly to be reevaluated by smart people; problem is new Bond has no Raiders and no Crusade, and not even a Skull. )

That said, I guess I can see liking it.  It's got some pretty great parts, that fail to form a coherent whole.  Sometimes that's okay, just not here.

[katmai]

Just came back from cautionary tale of the scourge that is Canadian Jews in Hollywood aka This is the End

Malthus must be stopped!!!!

[Ideologue]

And that is with them shooting a new 40 min ending to the film

Well, they brough in Lindelof, so it's not like another outcome was possible.

Oh man.  When I remembered it was Marc Forster directing (hooray for Quantum of Solace, and fuck the people that bafflingly disliked it but did like Casino Royale and/or Skyfall ), I was a little more enthusiastic about going to see it, then you tell me this.  That guy is a human tumor.

WTF? Actually why am I surprised that you'd be happy with a film that resolves around the tension of water rights in Bolivia.

You're so elite that you're no longer dependent upon water now?

[garbon]

And speaking of Marc Forster, Quantum of Solace was way better.  That's not that damning, I guess, since Quantum was way better than almost all of the thirteen or so I've seen, except Goldfinger, Goldeneye, and the edited version of Moonraker with no speedboat chases instead of two that exists only in my mind.  But Quantum's like an A and Skyfall is like a C+.  (Quantum is the Temple of Doom of new Bond, except new Bond has no Raiders and no Crusade, and not even a Skull. )

I was almost okay with being like, guys lay off Ide for his movie reviews but then you say something like that.

[garbon]

And that is with them shooting a new 40 min ending to the film

Well, they brough in Lindelof, so it's not like another outcome was possible.

Oh man.  When I remembered it was Marc Forster directing (hooray for Quantum of Solace, and fuck the people that bafflingly disliked it but did like Casino Royale and/or Skyfall ), I was a little more enthusiastic about going to see it, then you tell me this.  That guy is a human tumor.

WTF? Actually why am I surprised that you'd be happy with a film that resolves around the tension of water rights in Bolivia.

You're so elite that you're no longer dependent upon water now?

Water in Bolivia? Wake me up when I'm supposed to care.

[Ideologue]

Look, it could be worse.  It could've been a typewriter in Turkey.

[Ideologue]

And anyway the point of that movie isn't the threat, though I disagree and thought it was most excellent--not every villain has to be Hugo Drax or Auric Goldfinger, and the weaselly French guy in Quantum is at least as good as the weaselly French guy in Casino--but Bond being in emotional pain and Camille Bontes accepting his friendship but being sort of disgusted by him.  It's not often ten seconds can make a movie, but her reaction when he tries to kiss her is pretty good.  Also there's building made out of rocket fuel!  I don't think that was up to code.

[katmai]

Than heavens Ide has law degree to fall back on.

[garbon]

Than heavens Ide has law degree to fall back on.

Something like that.

[Ideologue]

Than heavens Ide has law degree to fall back on.

[garbon]

Look, it could be worse.  It could've been a typewriter in Turkey.

Truly the only settings for the best films.

[Ideologue]

So Greece got me into this Doctor Who thing.  I've obviously been aware of the show since forever, and being on the Internet and talking with total dorkburgers like you I was relatively familiar with its mythos long before I ever watched any of it, knowing what a Dalek is, that the Master is a renegade Time Lord, that a Time Lord is a Gallifreyan and has lives like a cat whose cat actor's contract periodically expires, etc.  lot.  But I'd never really watched it with particular dedication.

So, in rectification, I was watching the first series/season/thing with Christopher Eccleston, and that guy's great, because he's, like, a genocidal maniac, but he's also sweet and funny, but not a hipster-looking spike-haired doofus or Neanderthalish nerd.  I got to the final episodes of his series, Bad Wolf and Parting of the Ways. It was related in backstory that the Doctor had killed about a billion Daleks, but some survived this neblous "Time War," through vaguely explained means, and now they run a bunch of game shows in the Mojoverse Future, for vaguely explained reasons.  The Doctor faces his greatest nemesis!  AND IT WAS THE LAZIEST SHIT.

So the Doctor has the option of killing all remaining Daleks (again), but the indiscriminancy of the weapon will kill many/most humans too (but it's in the year A.D. 200,100, so who cares).  He sends his companion, Rose, in the TARDIS back to Chav Street, London, 200x, nominally to deny the Daleks the advanced Time Lord technology (which, um, don't they already have?) but primarily to save Rose because despite his mess of alien genitals he wubs her and wants to make spontaneous abortion babies with his Time Lord seed.  So, this act of salvation accomplished, he faces the Daleks with his improvised kill-everything button, but his genocidal maniac credentials, he declines.  Lame.

Then Rose goes fucking nuts in 200x trying to get the TARDIS to work with a real misplaced sense of urgency because one thing I've learned from watching even just a few Doctor Who episodes is that the writers don't seem to understand the central technology of the show is time travel.

Throughout the series, the words "bad wolf" have appeared as a sort of beacon or code, and it turns out I guess that, through vaguely explained means, Rose wrote them, and they are a semantically useless message that she magically deciphers to mean "Save him," which 1)duh and 2)is the same number of letters and is much clearer.  "Bad wolf": it's not even an anagram.

So she opens up the TARDIS' heart which apparently gives you Dark Phoenix powers and kills the Daleks with a wave of her hand, since having godlike powers puts her under no obligation to not just murder, but then Empress Lilandra hunts her down and she takes her own life to save the man she loves but the Doctor sucks the poison out so Rose is ok I guess and the Eccleston is CGI'd into a guy with extremely mid-oughts hair whom I immediately now dislike, even though I thought he was fine in the episodes I've already seen him in.

It's possible I might have missed something in the couple of episodes I skipped because I was impatient to get to the Dalek part.  But I don't think so.  It just seems like things happened in the plot because BBC accepted the first draft of the script.

Still, there are indeed lots and lots of Daleks rolling around shooting people and plunging stuff and saying things like "PREDICT! PREDICT! PREDICT!" and "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!" so a pretty solid B I guess.

[CountDeMoney]

I have an irrational hatred of Doctor Who stemming from my childhood;  when we didn't have cable when I was growing up it was absolutely the only thing on television--on PBS no less--with that atrocious BBC production value after Saturday Night Live went off the air and the other networks shut down for the night.*  Talk about a boring ass Saturday night at 2am when you don't want to go to sleep.

Fuck Dr. Who.  I will never watch that bullshit.  The scars run deep.





*I also believe this is the same childhood trauma that forces me to subscribe to every cable channel possible.